Article by Judy Mosley

It hit me today.  I’m hot!

We were eating lunch outside with our next door neighbors. There was little shade in their backyard and the sun shone brightly in the cloudless sky.  The humidity was high as we enjoyed the food and conversation … But, what I couldn’t keep from thinking about was that I was so hot!

What I haven’t mentioned is that I was wearing pants. I’ve been wearing pants for at least seven straight summers.  I own only one pair of shorts and those are for running. And the reason for refusing to wear shorts for at least seven years of my life is because, somewhere along the line, I decided that my knees were ugly …

Now, truth be told there is really nothing abnormal about my knees.  There are no deformities or lumps and strange birthmarks.  Personally, I just thought they were too knobby.

So, as I sat out in the sun today, eating my hamburger and watching my neighbor looking much more comfortable in her shorts than I was in my pants, I decided that it didn’t matter what my knees looked like.

I didn’t want to be so hot!  I wanted to feel better.

Later on in the day, I added up the years that I have made myself uncomfortable because of how I felt about my knees … And how I made this decision, not because of valid reasoning but on something that didn’t even matter.

How many people are looking at my knees anyway?  Why did I think my knees were so offensive that I had to hide them for this long?  And then I thought how strange it was that the look of my knees doesn’t matter now because this is after I have had three kids.  My stomach is certainly not what it once was, not to mention the varicose veins that have threaded throughout the surface of my left leg with the gift of each pregnancy.  But these don’t seem to matter either.

Then I thought … how silly things like these keep us from what really matters.

For me, it was being comfortable in the summer.  But what other things have I missed out on because of what I had decided was so important? How many moments have I missed because I felt a little off, or because I would have been taken out of my comfort zone?

How many friendships have I never started because, well, you know, they’re different, and I really don’t have time?  How many experiences have I missed out on?  How many times have I said no, when I could have said yes and really enjoyed myself in the process?

So in the next couple of days, I’m going to buy some shorts.  Even though the kids started back to school … Summer isn’t over yet!

What is it that’s keeping you from a life that really matters? 

“The comfort zone takes our greatest aspirations and turns them into excuses for not bothering to aspire.”
-Peter McWilliams

“… business is hard on relationships, but it’s just as hard on your own spiritual well-being.  It’s easy to lose focus, to forget your priorities and wander from the path.  There is not any one thing you can do to survive this desert.  It’s a matter of maintenance, of the small things you do every day and every week to keep the engine running smoothly.”
-Ralph Winter

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